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Awareness and Human Learning
Shakti Gattegno
My thanks are due to Roslyn Young whose article "On Awareness and Awarenesses" in The
Science of Education in Questions - N° 5 - June 1991, prompted me to write. In it, Roslyn
articulates with clarity her insights into 'awareness' and the reasons why the French-speaking
people, on the whole, understand 'awareness' in terms of "the gelling of the awarenesses" or
an ongoing process whereas the English-speaking people understand 'awareness' as a "state of
being".
It is fascinating to discover for ourselves the extent to which our culturally nurtured 'mode of
thought' affects our understanding of what we meet. With this in mind, I will state what
'awareness' means to me. The intimate relationship between awareness and human learning
will be part of it.
In what follows, you will find the impact of the Hindu mode of thought. My hope is that you
would not be so taken by the so-called exotic flavour as to miss the evidence contained
therein, of the human act of transcendence which occurs any time a 'given' is thoroughly
understood and, therefore, fully integrated in one's being, leaving one a fluent user of the
'given' as an instrument for further explorations.
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Awareness - a human attribute - is the 'lighting' in the glow of which human beings see that-
which-is as it is. In other words, by the virtue of being human, we are endowed with the
human energy, the presence of which enables us to see the isness of what there is, hitherto
'unknown' to us.
Awareness, the human energy, is also present as 'its own dynamics' in the inner human senses,
for example, our sense of truth. The functioning of this inner sense consists in a constant
search for and the verification of the truth of all that we meet in our relation to ourselves and
the world around us. Each one's search is a distinctly individual activity guided by one's own
sense of truth pertaining to what interests one. The energy that energizes it is human
awareness, our common human bond. While the lighting that is awareness glows steadily and
clear, linking us with the 'unknown', its dynamics invigorate and define the rhythm of our
existence as we mobilize and exercise our inner senses with the human energy of the will -
another human attribute. For instance, with our 'willful' sense of truth permeated with the
dynamics of awareness, we develop the inner criteria that serve us as the reference points for
our actions of which our experiences in life are made.
But, as we all know, not all our actions and experiences are rooted in our will.

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There are our actions and experiences which we initiate with the energy of the human will.
Fully involved in experiencing them, we learn as we go through them with the whole of
ourselves.
But some of our experiences are imposed on us against our will. They generate a divisive
tension in us, the tension of ambivalence. We act and live such experiences half-heartedly,
wishing we didn't have to. We get stuck with them instead of going through them.
Then, there are our actions and experiences activated and fed by the momentum of our
ulterior motives. For example, we may conduct ourselves to please others in order to gain
favours in return; we may manipulate others to feel our power over them; we may exploit
situations to our advantage at the cost of others, etc. These are our will-less acts. Though we
conduct them, they have little to do with the human will. We are unaware of this fact as we
are of the momentum behind them. We may live such acts with fervour, but, actually, we are
"lived by" them as we are "lived by" the experiences they generate.
We process our self-willed and self-initiated actions and experiences with our conscious mind
which, being one of our inner senses, is permeated with the dynamics of awareness. Involved
in the process, we learn to evolve in our humanness. The learning process allows our human
future to come to dwell in our present. With an attentive and alert mind, we know what our
actions and experiences, in their essence, mean to us individually as well as in the broader
human context relative to others in our life. The process of knowing the meaning is the
functioning of our conscious mind. The energy that energizes the process is human
awareness. We integrate our processed experiences into the totality of our being with the
energy of affectivity - another of the human attributes, the source in us of human integrity at
work in unison with human awareness and will.
But we fail to process and integrate those of our experiences which originate from the
negation and the violations of the human will: - the ones we are forced to live; the ones to
which we willy-nilly succumb; those that are the product of our ulterior motives and we are
"lived by". We might resent such experiences. We might want to disown them and hide them
even from ourselves. We might justify them and cling to them as our prized possessions. But,
we neglect to process them. The unprocessed experiences remain unresolved and
unintegrated. Unrelated to our human attributes, they occupy our lives in the form of
neglected stray fragments.
The act of our neglect casts its shadow. Our fears and ambitions, our prejudices and
preconceptions, our insecurities and anxieties, our ego-centeredness, and, our adherence to
them all, are the symptoms of our neglect. They constitute the shadow of neglect. Awareness
still shines clear and steady but is eclipsed by the shadow. The 'lighting' appears dimmed.
What there is to see, looks obscured. We try to make up for the diminished light by projecting
our preconceived notions, fears, needs, etc. Thus, we stay with the 'known' instead of meeting
the 'unknown'. As we look at our projections, we believe we are with what there is. The
shadow of neglect interferes with the dynamics of awareness, too. It distorts the functionings
of our inner senses, as well. The extent to which one lives one's life led by the eclipsed
awareness, to those extent one lives a prehuman life. Prehuman experiences alienated from
the human attributes, lead to prehuman learning.
At any point in one's life, one may come to see the truth of one's prehumanness. At such a
moment, one wills to initiate the process of humanizing one's existence. From then on, one
willfully engages one's conscious mind in processing the contents of one's consciousness
which includes the subconscious and the unconscious. Since awareness, a human attribute, is
our common human bond, the humanizing process may be precipitated in one by the
awareness at work in another human being. Just as we contribute to one another's
prehumanness through our prehuman inter-relating, so also we can be instrumental in

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enhancing one another's humanizing process with our self-aware acts.
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In the Silent Way, the focus is on the learning process rooted in human awareness, will,
affectivity. While the students learn the language, the teacher, at every step of the way, learns
how to teach without interfering with the students' human potential for learning as well as the
actual learning of each individual student. Since all the participants in the situation are being
learners, and, as such, are moving from one illuminated spot to the next, testing, verifying,
knowing, transforming their potential into their existential reality, integrating and moving on,
-- the presence of awareness as the "gelling of awarenesses" can be easily perceived as a
striking characteristic of the Silent Way.
What may not be so obvious is awareness as a constant presence:
▪ being one's only human link with the 'unknown' in the world out there as well as in one's
inner life, connecting one to one's human future;
▪ inspiring one to be a learner with the will to meet the 'unknown' and be affected by its
reality and, thus to be transforming it and being transformed in the course of one's
interaction with it;
▪ enabling one to take joy in learning with the dignity of an autonomous human being
responsible for realizing oneself;
▪ mobilizing one as a teacher to be willing to humanize teaching by learning to be vulnerable
to the learning potential and the actual learning of his/her students.
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In Chapter 13 of "The Science of Education - Part 2C", Gattegno refers to 'awareness' in his
usual succinct manner as "the condition as well as the dynamics of learning". The sense in
which it is so, can best be comprehended by taking an inward journey and learning to
understand what it means while witnessing the presence as well as the workings of awareness,
within oneself.
© Shakti Gattegno New York City, July 28, 1991
The Science of Education in Questions – N° 6 - February 1992
Awareness and Human Learning by Shakti Gattegno is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.